At last Thursday’s Okaloosa County School Board workshop, Superintendent Marcus Chambers gave the board an update on 3rd grade FSA reading test scores from this past school year.

“As you know, this was a difficult year,” started Mr. Chambers. “A lot of interruptions to school days here in the state of Florida, and we know that learning loss was a big deal throughout the state.”

According to Chambers, roughly 91% of Okaloosa 3rd grade students were tested. 

• The District normally has 98-99% of the students tested.
• Some of the districts across the state only had 50% of students tested.

“To still get 91% of students tested is a compliment to our schools,” said Chambers to the Board. “I don’t want to just gloss over that. This is schools literally calling families to come up to take some of these tests. Some families did not want to come up and take tests, and we didn’t put that pressure on them.”

The last time 3rd graders were tested in the State of Florida was 2019, and since then, scores have dropped 4 percentage points at the state level. In Okaloosa County, we had a 3% drop in score. 

• 63% of Okaloosa 3rd grade students were proficient this past school year.
• 54% of 3rd grade students across the state level were proficient this past school year.
• State testing was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic.

In 2019, 3rd graders ranked 15th in state. This year, they rank 8th in the state.

“Most importantly, this year was about safety,” continued Chambers. “Giving our students and our employees an environment where they can be at school, have as much normalcy as possible, but still learn. Again, it’s not all about test scores, but I’m very proud to see we are now 8th in what was a very, very difficult year.”

As for learning loss, the OCSD saw that it was not unique to struggling students but also affected advanced students because they just didn’t have the instruction.

“If you’re quarantined two or three times, and the teacher was quarantined or had COVID, you had a significant amount of instructional time lost,” said Sheila Lightborne, Assistant Superintendent.

According to Florida Politics, “high rates of in-person instruction in school districts correlated to better results in third grade reading assessments.”

Moving forward to the upcoming school year, the District is “rebooting” the curriculum to help get students excited and engaged, and to help teachers and principals make it happen.

The 3rd grade reading test results are the first batch released from Florida’s 2021 standardized testing season, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Scores for math, science and social studies exams are expected by late July.